Posted 5 years ago on Jan. 24, 2013, 4:25 p.m. EST by Middleaged
(5140)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

How about A New National Holiday, Rent-Seeking Holiday, to call Attention to the Problem, and Get National Education about the Grave Issues that has set upon us all.

The Problem: Much of Federal statistics on GDP include financial GDP and include money spent in Financial Schemes like Derivatives and Wall Street Gambling. IMO media focuses only on GDP for economic health.

According to Wikipedia:

In economics, rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. One example is spending money on political lobbying in order to be given a share of wealth that has already been created. A famous example of rent-seeking is the limiting of access to lucrative occupations, as by medieval guilds or modern state certifications and licensures. People accused of rent seeking typically argue that they are indeed creating new wealth (or preventing the reduction of old wealth) by improving quality controls, guaranteeing that charlatans do not prey on a gullible public, and preventing bubbles.

Many current studies of rent-seeking focus on efforts to capture various monopoly privileges stemming from government regulation of a market. The term itself derives, however, from the far older practice of appropriating a portion of production by gaining ownership or control of land.

Hm... Maybe we should ask for National Jubilee Holiday First ... and they can say part of the reason is "Rent_Seeking".

Just think of all the people that work in the US adding no Value to Production?

1) Tax Lobbyist
2) Tax Lawyers
3) Lawywers in General
4) Tax Accountants
5) Financial managers
6) Anyone who works in TBTF Bank
7) US Congress
8) Anyone who works in SEC, FDIC, CFTC, OFHEO, OCC
9) Anyone who works in one of the branches of the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve Board
10) Alan Greenspan whatever he is doing today
11) Hank Paulson
12) Anyone that works as an Economist for the Federal Government
13) Eric Holder
14) Anyone that Worked in OTS before closed
15) Anyone in Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Office of Financial Research

Hhmmm waterboarding - I wonder - I mean I live in the land of 10,000 humidifiers/lakes - - so yeah in the summertime it can be like trying to breathe water - to do that to someone intentionally? No - not cool dude.

I'm just free associating. Not sure where I am getting the ideas from. Well you know AJ has been putting stuff out for quiet a while on TSA, and DHS. Ah, Naomi Klein, yes have seen some video from her, Shock Doctrine.

The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman have risen to prominence in some countries because they were pushed through while the citizens were reacting to disasters or upheavals. It is implied that some man-made crises, such as the Falklands war, may have been created with the intention of pushing through these unpopular reforms in their wake.